C:\Users\John\Downloads\S\Stephen King - The Night of the Tiger_txt.PDB

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King, Stephen - The Night of

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04/12/2006

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04/12/2006

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The Night of The Tiger
I first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Steubenville, but I'd
only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been making his irregular
visits indefinitely. No one much wanted to talk about Mr. Legere, not even
that last night when it seemed that the world was coming to an end -- the
night that Mr. Indrasil disappeared.
But if I'm going to tell it to you from the beginning, I should start by
saying that I'm Eddie Johnston, and I was born and raised in Sauk City. Went
to school there, had my first girl there, and worked in Mr. Lillie's
five-and-dime there for a while after I graduated from high school. That was a
few years back... more than I like to count, sometimes. Not that Sauk City's
such a bad place; hot, lazy summer nights sitting on the front porch is all
right for some folks, but it just seemed to itch me, like sitting in the same
chair too long. So I quit the five-and-dime and joined Farnum & Williams'
All-American 3-Ring Circus and Side Show. I did it in a moment of giddiness
when the calliope music kind of fogged my judgment, I guess.
So I became a roustabout, helping put up tents and take them down, spreading
sawdust, cleaning cages, and sometimes selling cotton candy when the regular
salesman had to go away and bark for Chips Baily, who had malaria and
sometimes had to go someplace far away, and holler. Mostly things that kids do
for free passes -- things I used to do when I was a kid. But times change.
They don't seem to come around like they used to.
We swung through Illinois and Indiana that hot summer, and the crowds were
good and everyone was happy. Everyone except Mr. Indrasil. Mr. Indrasil was
never happy. He was the lion tamer, and he looked like old pictures I've seen
of Rudolph Valentine. He was tall, with handsome, arrogant features and a
shock of wild black hair. And strange, mad eyes -- the maddest eyes I've ever
seen. He was silent most of the time; two syllables from Mr. Indrasil was a
sermon. All the circus people kept a mental as well as a physical distance,
because his rages were legend. There was a whispered story about coffee
spilled on his hands after a particularly difficult performance and a murder
that was almost done to a young roustabout before Mr. Indrasil could be hauled
off him. I don't know about that. I do know that I grew to fear him worse than
I had cold-eyed Mr. Edmont, my high school principal, Mr. Lillie, or even my
father, who was capable of cold dressing-downs that would leave the recipient
quivering with shame and dismay.
When I cleaned the big cats' cages, they were always spotless. The memory of
the few times I had the vituperative wrath of Mr. Indrasil called down on me
still have the power to turn my knees watery in retrospect.
Mostly it was his eyes - large and dark and totally blank. The eyes, and the
feeling that a man capable of controlling seven watchful cats in a small cage
must be part savage himself.
And the only two things he was afraid of were Mr. Legere and the circus's one
tiger, a huge beast called Green Terror.
As I said, I first saw Mr. Legere in Steubenville, and he was staring into
Green Terror's cage as if the tiger knew all the secrets of life and death.

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He was lean, dark, quiet. His deep, recessed eyes held an expression of pain
and brooding violence in their green-flecked depths, and his hands were always
crossed behind his back as he stared moodily in at the tiger.
Green Terror was a beast to be stared at. He was a huge, beautiful specimen
with a flawless striped coat, emerald eyes, and heavy fangs like ivory spikes.
His roars usually filled the circus grounds - fierce, angry, and utterly
savage. He seemed to scream defiance and frustration at the whole world.
Chips Baily, who had been with Farnum &Williams since Lord knew when, told me
that Mr. Indrasil used to use Green Terror in his act, until one night when
the tiger leaped suddenly from its perch and almost ripped his head from his
shoulders before he could get out of' the cage. I noticed that Mr. Indrasil
always wore, his hair long down the back of his neck.
I can still remember the tableau that day in Steubenville. It was hot,
sweatingly hot, and we had a shirtsleeve crowd. That was why Mr. Legere and
Mr. Indrasil stood out. Mr. Legere, standing silently by the tiger cage, was
fully dressed in a suit and vest, his face unmarked by perspiration. And Mr.
Indrasil, clad in one of his beautiful silk shirts and white whipcord
breeches, was staring at them both, his face dead-white, his eyes bulging in
lunatic anger, hate, and fear. He was carrying a currycomb and brush, and his
hands were trembling as they clenched on them spasmodically.
Suddenly he saw me, and his anger found vent. "You!" He shouted. "Johnston!"
"Yes sir?" I felt a crawling in the pit of my stomach. I knew I was about to
have the wrath of Indrasil vented on me, and the thought turned me weak with
fear. I like to think I'm as brave as the next, and if it had been anyone
else, I think I would have been fully determined to stand up for myself. But
it wasn't anyone else. It was Mr. Indrasil, and his eyes were mad.
"These cages, Johnston. Are they supposed to be clean?" He pointed a finger,
and I followed it. I saw four errant wisps of straw and an incriminating
puddle of hose water in the far corner of one.
"Y-yes, sir," I said, and what was intended to be firmness became palsied
bravado.
Silence, like the electric pause before a downpour. People were beginning to
look, and I was dimly aware that Mr. Legere was staring at us with his
bottomless eyes.
"Yes, sir?" Mr. Indrasil thundered suddenly. "Yes, sir? Yes, sir? Don't
insult my intelligence, boy! Don't you think I can see? Smell? Did you use the
disinfectant?''
"I used disinfectant yes----"
"Don't answer me back!" He screeched, and then the sudden drop in his voice
made my skin crawl. "Don't you dare answer me back." Everyone was staring now.
I wanted to retch, to die. "Now you get the hell into that tool shed, and you
get that disinfectant and swab out those cages," he whispered, measuring every
word. One hand suddenly shot out, grasping my shoulder. "And don't you ever,
ever, speak back to me again."
I don't know where the words came from, but they were suddenly there,
spilling off my lips. "I didn't speak back to you, Mr. Indrasil, and I don't
like you saying I did. I-- resent it. Now let me go."
His face went suddenly red, then white, then almost saffron with rage. His
eyes were blazing doorways to hell.
Right then I thought I was going to die.
He made an inarticulate gagging sound, and the grip on my shoulder became
excruciating. His right hand went up...up...up, and then descended with
unbelievable speed.
If that hand had connected with my face, it would have knocked me senseless
at best. At worst, it would have broken my neck.
It did not connect.
Another hand materialized magically out of space, right in front of me. The
two straining limbs came together with a flat Smacking sound. It was Mr.
Legere.
"Leave the boy alone," he said emotionlessly.

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Mr. Indrasil stared at him for a long second, and I think there was nothing
so unpleasant in the whole business as watching the fear of Mr. Legere and the
mad lust to hurt (or to kill!) mix in those terrible eyes.
Then he turned and stalked away.
I turned to look at Mr. Legere. "Thank you," I said.
"Don't thank me." And it wasn't a "don't thank me," but a "don't thank me.''
Not a gesture of modesty but a literal command. In a sudden flash of intuition
– empathy if you will – I understood exactly what he meant by that comment. I
was a pawn in what must have been a long combat between the two of them. I had
been captured by Mr. Legere rather than Mr. Indrasil. He had stopped the lion
tamer not because he felt for me, but because it gained him an advantage,
however slight, in their private war.
"What's your name?" I asked, not at all offended by what I had inferred. He
had, after all, been honest with me.
"Legere," he said briefly. He turned to go.
"Are you with a circus?" I asked, not wanting to let him go so easily. "You
seemed to know --- him."
A faint smile touched his thin lips, and warmth kindled in his eyes for a
moment; "No. You might call me a-policeman." And before I could reply, he had
disappeared into the surging throng passing by.
The next day we picked up stakes and moved on.
I saw Mr. Legere again in Danville and, two weeks later, in Chicago. In the
time between I tried to avoid Mr. Indrasil as much as possible and kept the
cat cages spotlessly clean. On the day before we pulled out for St. Louis, I
asked Chips Baily and Sally O'Hara, the red-headed wire walker, if Mr. Legere
and Mr. Indrasil knew each other. I was pretty sure they did, because Mr.
Legere was hardly following the circus to eat our fabulous lime ice.
Sally and Chips looked at each other over their coffee cups. "No one knows
much about what's between those, two," she said. "But it's been going on for a
long time maybe twenty years. Ever since Mr. Indrasil came over from Ringling
Brothers, and maybe before that."
Chips nodded. "This Legere guy picks up the circus almost every year when we
swing through the Midwest and stays with us until we catch the train for
Florida in Little Rock. Makes old Leopard Man touchy as one of his cats."
"He told me he was a police-man," I said. "What do you suppose he looks for
around here? You don't suppose Mr. Indrasil--?"
Chips and Sally looked at each other strangely, and both just about broke
their backs getting up. "Got to see those weights and counter weights get
stored right," Sally said, and Chips muttered something not too convincing
about checking on the rear axle of his U-Haul.
And that's about the way any conversation concerning Mt. Indrasil or Mr.
Legere usually broke up--- hurriedly, with many hard-forced excuses.
We said farewell to Illinois and comfort at the same time. A killing hot
spell came on, seemingly at the very instant we crossed the border, and it
stayed with us for the next month and a half, as we moved slowly across
Missouri and into Kansas. Everyone grew short of temper, including the
animals. And that, of course, included the cats, which were Mr. Indrasil's
responsibility. He rode the roustabouts unmercifully, and myself in
particular. I grinned and tried to bear it, even though I had my own case of
prickly heat. You just don't argue with a crazy man, and I'd pretty well
decided that was what Mr. Indrasil was.
No one was getting any sleep, and that is the curse of all circus performers.
Loss of sleep slows up reflexes, and slow reflexes make for danger. In
Independence Sally O'Hara fell seventy-five feet into the nylon netting and
fractured her shoulder. Andrea Solienni, our bareback rider, fell off one of
her horses during rehearsal and was knocked unconscious by a flying hoof.
Chips Baily suffered silently with the fever that was always with him, his
face a waxen mask, with cold perspiration clustered at each temple.
And in many ways, Mr. Indrasil had the roughest row to hoe of all. The cats
were nervous and short-tempered, and every time he stepped into the Demon Cat

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Cage, as it was billed, he took his life in his hands. He was feeding the
lions ordinate amounts of raw meat right before he went on, something that
lion tamers rarely do, contrary to popular belief. His face grew drawn and
haggard, and his eyes were wild.
Mr. Legere was almost always there, by Green Terror's cage, watching him. And
that, of course, added to Mr. Indrasil's load. The circus began eyeing the
silk-shirted figure nervously as he passed, and I knew they were all thinking
the same thing I was: He's going to crack wide open, and when he does ---
When he did, God alone knew what would happen.
The hot spell went on, and temperatures were climbing well into the nineties
every day. It seemed as if the rain gods were mocking us. Every town we left
would receive the showers of blessing. Every town we entered was hot, parched,
sizzling.
And one night, on the road between Kansas City and Green Bluff, I saw
something that upset me more than anything else.
It was hot -- abominably hot. It was no good even trying to sleep. I rolled
about on my cot like a man in a fever-delirium, chasing the sandman but never
quite catching him. Finally I got up, pulled on my pants, and went outside.
We had pulled off into a small field and drawn into a circle. Myself and two
other roustabouts had unloaded the cats so they could catch whatever breeze
there might be. The cages were there now, painted dull silver by the swollen
Kansas moon, and a tall figure in white whipcord breeches was standing by the
biggest of them. Mr. Indrasil.
He was baiting Green Terror with a long, pointed pike. The big cat was
padding silently around the cage, trying to avoid the sharp tip. And the
frightening thing was, when the staff did punch into the tiger's flesh, it did
not roar in pain and anger as it should have. It maintained an ominous
silence, more terrifying to the person who knows cats than the loudest of
roars.
It had gotten to Mr. Indrasil, too. "Quiet bastard, aren't you?" He grunted.
Powerful arms flexed, and the iron shaft slid forward. Green Terror flinched,
and his eyes rolled horribly. But he did not make a sound. "Yowl!" Mr.
Indrasil hissed. "Go ahead and yowl, you monster Yowl!" And he drove his spear
deep into the tiger's flank.
Then I saw something odd. It seemed that a shadow moved in the darkness under
one of the far wagons, and the moonlight seemed to glint on staring eyes --
green eyes.
A cool wind passed silently through the clearing, lifting dust and rumpling
my hair.
Mr. Indrasil looked up, and there was a queer listening expression on his
face. Suddenly he dropped the bar, turned, and strode back to his trailer.
I stared again at the far wagon, but the shadow was gone. Green Tiger stood
motionlessly at the bars of his cage, staring at Mr. Indrasil's trailer. And
the thought came to me that it hated Mr. Indrasil not because he was cruel or
vicious, for the tiger respects these qualities in its own animalistic way,
but rather because he was a deviate from even the tiger's savage norm. He was
a rogue. That's the only way I can put it. Mr. Indrasil was not only a human
tiger, but a rogue tiger as well.
The thought jelled inside me, disquieting and a little scary. I went back
inside, but still I could not sleep.

The heat went on.
Every day we fried, every night we tossed and turned, sweating and sleepless.
Everyone was painted red with sunburn, and there were fistfights over trifling
affairs. Everyone was reaching the point of explosion.
Mr. Legere remained with us, a silent watcher, emotionless on the surface,
but, I sensed, with deep-running currents of - what? Hate? Fear? Vengeance? I
could not place it. But he was potentially dangerous, I was sure of that.
Perhaps more so than Mr. Indrasil was, if anyone ever lit his particular fuse.
He was at the circus at every performance, always dressed in his nattily

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creased brown suit, despite the killing temperatures. He stood silently by
Green Terror's cage, seeming to commune deeply with the tiger, who was always
quiet when he was around.
From Kansas to Oklahoma, with no letup in the temperature. A day without a
heat prostration case was a rare day indeed. Crowds were beginning to drop
off; who wanted to sit under a stifling canvas tent when there was an
air-conditioned movie just around the block?
We were all as jumpy as cats, to coin a particularly applicable phrase. And
as we set down stakes in Wildwood Green, Oklahoma, I think we all knew a
climax of some sort was close at hand. And most of us knew it would involve
Mr. Indrasil. A bizarre occurrence had taken place just prior to our first
Wildwood performance. Mr. Indrasil had been in the Demon Cat Cage, putting the
ill-tempered lions through their paces. One of them missed its balance on its
pedestal, tottered and almost regained it. Then, at that precise moment, Green
Terror let out a terrible, ear-splitting roar.
The lion fell, landed heavily, and suddenly launched itself with rifle-bullet
accuracy at Mr. Indrasil. With a frightened curse, he heaved his chair at the
cat's feet, tangling up the driving legs. He darted out just as the lion
smashed against the bars.
As he shakily collected himself preparatory to re-entering the cage, Green
Terror let out another roar -- but this one monstrously like a huge,
disdainful chuckle.
Mr. Indrasil stared at the beast, white-faced, then turned and walked away.
He did not come out of his trailer all afternoon.
That afternoon wore on interminably. But as the temperature climbed, we all
began looking hopefully toward the west, where huge banks of thunderclouds
were forming.
"Rain, maybe," I told Chips, stopping by his barking platform in front of the
sideshow.
But he didn't respond to my hopeful grin. "Don't like it," he said. "No wind.
Too hot. Hail or tornadoes." His face grew grim. "It ain't no picnic, ridin'
out a tornado with a pack of crazy-wild animals all over the place, Eddie.
I've thanked God mor'n once when we've gone through the tornado belt that we
don't have no elephants.
"Yeah" he added gloomily, "you better hope them clouds stay right on the
horizon."
But they didn't. They moved slowly toward us, cyclopean pillars in the sky,
purple at the bases and awesome blue-black through the cumulonimbus. All air
movement ceased, and the heat lay on us like a woolen winding-shroud. Every
now and again, thunder would clear its throat further west.
About four, Mr. Farnum himself, ringmaster and half-owner of the circus,
appeared and told us there would be no evening performance; just batten down
and find a convenient hole to crawl into in case of trouble. There had been
corkscrew funnels spotted in several places between Wildwood and Oklahoma
City, some within forty miles of us.
There was only a small crowd when the announcement came, apathetically
wandering through the sideshow exhibits or ogling the animals. But Mr. Legere
had not been present all day; the only person at Green Terror's cage was a
sweaty high-school boy with clutch of books. When Mr. Farnum announced the
U.S. Weather Bureau tornado warning that had been issued, he hurried quickly
away.
I and the other two roustabouts spent the rest of the-afternoon working our
tails off, securing tents, loading animals back into their wagons, and making
generally sure that everything was nailed down.
Finally only the cat cages were left, and there was a special arrangement for
those. Each cage had a special mesh "breezeway" accordioned up against it,
which, when extended completely, connected with the Demon Cat Cage. When the
smaller cages had to be moved, the felines could be herded into the big cage
while they were loaded up. The big cage itself rolled on gigantic casters and
could be muscled around to a position where each cat could be let back into

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its original cage. It sounds complicated, and it was, but it was just the only
way.
We did the lions first, then Ebony Velvet, the docile black panther that had
set the circus back almost one season's receipts. It was a tricky business
coaxing them up and then back through the breezeways, but all of` us preferred
it to calling Mr. Indrasil to help.
By the time we were ready for Green Terror, twilight had come --- a queer,
yellow twilight that hung humidly around us. The sky above had taken on a
flat, shiny aspect that I had never seen and which I didn't like in the least.
"Better hurry," Mr. Farnum said, as we laboriously trundled the Demon Cat
Cage back to where we could hook it to the back of Green Terror's show cage.
"Barometer's falling off fast." He shook his head worriedly. "Looks bad, boys.
Bad.'' He hurried on, still shaking his head.
We got Green Terror's breezeway hooked up and opened the back of his cage.
"In you go," I said encouragingly.
Green Terror looked at me menacingly and didn't move.
Thunder rumbled again, louder, closer, sharper. The sky had gone jaundice,
the ugliest color I have ever seen. Wind-devils began to pick jerkily at our
clothes and whirl away the flattened candy wrappers and cotton-candy cones
that littered the area.
"Come on, come on," I urged and poked him easily with the blunt-tipped rods
we were given to herd them with.
Green Terror roared ear-splittingly, and one paw lashed out with blinding
speed. The hardwood pole was jerked from my hands and splintered as if it had
been a greenwood twig. The tiger was on his feet now, and there was murder in
his eyes.
"Look," I said shakily. "One of you will have to go get Mr. Indrasil, that's
all. We can't wait around."
As if to punctuate my words, thunder cracked louder, the clapping of mammoth
hands.
Kelly Nixon and Mike McGregor flipped for it; I was excluded because of my
previous run-in with Mr. Indrasil. Kelly drew the task, threw us a wordless
glance that said he would prefer facing the storm and then started off.
He was gone almost ten minutes. The wind was picking up velocity now, and
twilight was darkening into a weird six o'clock night. I was scared, and am
not afraid to admit it. That rushing, featureless sky, the deserted circus
grounds, the sharp, tugging wind-vortices all that makes a memory that will
stay with me always, undimmed.
And Green Terror would not budge into his breezeway.
Kelly Nixon came rushing back, his eyes wide. "I pounded on his door for
'most five minutes!" He gasped. "Couldn't raise him!"
We looked at each other, at a loss. Green Terror was a big investment for the
circus. He couldn't just be left in the open. I turned bewilderedly, looking
for Chips, Mr. Farnum, or anybody who could tell me what to do. But everyone
was gone. The tiger was our responsibility. I considered trying to load the
cage bodily into the trailer, but I wasn't going to get my fingers in that
cage.
"Well, we've just got to go and get him," I said. "The three of us. Come on."
And we ran toward Mr. Indrasil's trailer through the gloom of coming night.

We pounded on his door until he must have thought all the demons of hell were
after him. Thankfully, it finally jerked open. Mr. Indrasil swayed and stared
down at us, his mad eyes rimmed and oversheened with drink. He smelled like a
distillery.
"Damn you, leave me alone," he snarled.
"Mr. Indrasil --" I had to shout over the rising whine of the wind. It was
like no storm I had ever heard of or read about, out there. It was like the
end of the world .
"You," he gritted softly. He reached down and gathered my shirt up in a knot.
"I'm going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget." He glared at Kelly and

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Mike, cowering back in the moving storm shadows. "Get out!"
They ran. I didn't blame them; I've told you -- Mr. Indrasil was crazy. And
not just ordinary crazy -- he was like a crazy animal, like one of his own
cats gone bad.
"All right," he muttered, staring down at me, his eyes like hurricane lamps.
"No juju to protect you now. No grisgris." His lips twitched in a wild,
horrible smile. "He isn't here now, is he? We're two of a kind, him and me.
Maybe the only two left. My nemesis -- and I'm his." He was rambling, and I
didn't try to stop him. At least his mind was off me.
"Turned that cat against me, back in '58. Always had the power more'n me.
Fool could make a million -- the two of us could make a million if he wasn't
so damned high and mighty...what's that?"
It was Green Terror, and he had begun to roar ear-splittingly.
"Haven't you got that damned tiger in?" He screamed, almost falsetto. He
shook me like a rag doll.
"He won't go!" I found myself yelling back. "You've got to --"
But he flung me away. I stumbled over the fold-up steps in front of his
trailer and crashed into a bone-shaking heap at the bottom. With something
between a sob and a curse, Mr. Indrasil strode past me, face mottled with
anger and fear.
I got up, drawn after him as if hypnotized. Some intuitive part of me
realized I was about to see the last act played out.
Once clear of the shelter of Mr. Indrasil's trailer, the power of the wind
was appalling. It screamed like a runaway freight train. I was an ant, a
speck, an unprotected molecule before that thundering, cosmic force.
And Mr. Legere was standing by Green Terror's cage.
It was like a tableau from Dante. The near-empty cage-clearing inside the
circle of trailers; the two men, facing each other silently, their clothes and
hair rippled by the shrieking gale; the boiling sky above; the twisting
wheatfields in the background, like damned souls bending to the whip of
Lucifer.
"It's time, Jason," Mr. Legere said, his words flayed across the clearing by
the wind.
Mr. Indrasil's wildly whipping hair lifted around the livid scar across the
back of his neck. His fists clenched, but he said nothing. I could almost feel
him gathering his will, his life force, his id. It gathered around him like an
unholy nimbus.
And, then, I saw with sudden horror that Mr. Legere was unhooking Green
Terror's breezeway -- and the back of the cage was open!
I cried out, but the wind ripped my words away.
The great tiger leaped out and almost flowed past Mr. Legere. Mr. Indrasil
swayed, but did not run. He bent his head and stared down at the tiger.
And Green Terror stopped.
He swung his huge head back to Mr. Legere, almost turned, and then slowly
turned back to Mr. Indrasil again. There was a terrifyingly palpable sensation
of directed force in the air, a mesh of conflicting wills centered around the
tiger. And the wills were evenly matched.
I think, in the end, it was Green Terror's own will -- his hate of Mr.
Indrasil -- that tipped the scales.
The cat began to advance, his eyes hellish, flaring beacons. And. something
strange began to happen to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to be folding in on
himself, shriveling, accordioning. The silk-shirt lost shape, the dark,
whipping hair became a hideous toadstool around his collar.
Mr. Legere called something across to him, and, simultaneously, Green Terror
leaped.
I never saw the outcome. The next moment I was slammed flat on my back, and
the breath seemed to be sucked from my body. I caught one crazily tilted
glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone funnel, and then the darkness descended.
When I awoke, I was in my cot just aft of the grainery bins in the
all-purpose storage trailer we carried. My body felt as if it had been beaten

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with padded Indian clubs.
Chips Baily appeared, his face lined and pale. He saw my eyes were open and
grinned relievedly. "Didn't know as you were ever gonna wake up. How you
feel?"
"Dislocated," I said. "What happened? How'd I get here?"
"We found you piled up against Mr. Indrasil's trailer. The tornado almost
carried you away for a souvenir, m'boy."
At the mention of Mr. Indrasil, all the ghastly memories came flooding back.
"Where is Mr. Indrasil? And Mr. Legere?"
His eyes went murky, and he started to make some kind of an evasive answer.
"Straight talk," I said, struggling up on one elbow. "I have to know, Chips.
I have to."
Something in my face must have decided him. "Okay. But this isn't exactly
what we told the cops -- in fact we hardly told the cops any of it. No sense
havin' people think we're crazy. Anyhow, Indrasil's gone. I didn't even know
that Legere guy was around."
"And Green Tiger?"
Chips' eyes were unreadable again. "He and the other tiger fought to death."
"Other tiger? There's no other ---"
"Yeah, but they found two of 'em, lying in each other's blood. Hell of a
mess. Ripped each other's throats out."
"What -- where --"
"Who knows? We just told the cops we had two tigers. Simpler that way." And
before I could say another word, he was gone.
And that's the end of my story -- except for two little items. The words Mr.
Legere shouted just before the tornado hit: "When a man and an animal live in
the same shell, Indrasil, the instincts determine the mold!"
The other thing is what keeps me awake nights. Chips told me later, offering
it only for what it might be worth. What he told me was that the strange tiger
had a long scar on the back of its neck.
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